


Rebirth

by MeBeThem4815



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fix It Fic, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 06:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19057393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeBeThem4815/pseuds/MeBeThem4815
Summary: Mollymauk Tealeaf becomes Mollymauk Twiceborn.





	Rebirth

It wasn’t like the first time. 

The first time the ground had been hard and the air had been cold and he had been naked and alone and oh-so-empty. But this time he could remember faces. He remembered a goblin with crooked teeth and a grin and a half-orc with an accent and a smile and another tiefling with blue skin and freckles on her chubby cheeks. He remembered a sullen woman, with blue robes and dark skin and oh how he had loved to make her mad. He remembered a human man as well, with skin that looked pale under all the dirt and eyes that were like chips of the sky in his face. And he remembered a woman, big and hulking and gentle and sweet, with a collection of flowers and a checkered past. He remembered her most of all, as he clawed his way out of the warm earth. And he loved her most for it. 

The dirt didn’t just taste like dirt this time, he remembered. This dirt tasted rich and somehow alive. His fingers broke the surface and he felt a large hand tug at him as more hands scrambled around his wrist. He heard muffled voices and then gasped as his mouth was freed of the dirt. Fingers ran along his face; small ones with talons and firm ones with quick and dexterous movements. A tug to his wrists later had him tumbling upward and free of his earthen prison. 

“Easy there friend.” A deep rumbling voice said. He coughed and hacked and there was a small skein by his side, handed to him by the dark skinned woman. The cork had been taken out so he just rinsed his mouth as best as he could. Silence has fallen as he spat the mud from his mouth and wiped at his eyes to see better. 

“What? No hello?” He teased the monk. He took a deep breath and smiled at her. “C’mon,, I know you missed me.” 

“Asshole.” She muttered, eyes filling with tears as she pulled him into a hug. There were people pressing in on him; a blue tiefling with curling tiny horns and a goblin woman with a mask hanging around her neck and a handsome (if slightly older) half-orc, and he could see the other human, the dirty man with the red hair, lingering in the shadows as his cat draped himself over the human’s shoulders, the wizard and cat standing next to the firbolg with pink hair. 

“C’mon you. Get in the hug.” He demanded, holding out an arm. The human made a choked sound like a sob and crawled into the pile. The purple teifling’s knees gave out, bringing the group with him. The firbolg was smiling gently as he rested on his staff, talking to the tree next to him. 

The magic tree, with a deep purple bark traced with faint white lines that reached up with curling branches and grasping, glossy leaves, into the light blue sky. It looked ancient and twisted, reaching up toward the blue. It look as if it had been standing in this ground for a thousand years. The ground around the was soft with rich green grass, and there were tiny little mushrooms around the roots of the massive tree, growing in the shadows of the gnarled roots. There was crying sounds and somewhere he was aware of of everyone openly crying, with the red-head wiping at his cheeks as quickly as his tears formed. 

“He said the earth would remember you.” The big woman said gently, her mouth as close to his ear as his horn would allow. “I missed you.” 

“I missed you too.” He gave her the tightest squeeze he could. 

The dark-skinned human sniffled a bit and the tiefling with the peacock tattoo laughed. “I don’t even get a hello from you?” 

“Don’t die again.” 

“Not making any promises, but I’ll do what I can do.” 

The red-headed human was the first to wriggle out of the hug. Good to know he was still uncomfortable with contact. He went and stood by the pink firbolg who was harvesting something from the tree he had been born from. 

A distinctive flutter in the branches caught his eye. His clothes were crusted with grave dirt and dried blood, and there was a fresh scar on his chest where he had been impaled; big and long and shining white against his lavender skin. But he didn’t care about that. He cared about his coat, caught in the branches, and the firbolg and the wizard working to free it from it’s leafy prison. 

“My coat.” He said, rising to his feet as the tangle of limbs fell away. The monk had the dirt from his grave on her hands and wraps (when had she gotten those?) and on her cheeks and he saw the way the dark skinned woman’s eyes tracked his friend as she moved to help the wizard and the firbolg. 

My my, things had turned interesting since he went away. He turned to the little blue tiefling in delight, holding out his hands for her. 

“So, tell me everything that’s happened.” 

she filled him in on what happened since he had been gone, chattering away happily as they worked together to free his coat. Some of them were still sniffling and the cleric with the pink backpack burst into tears twice more and hugged him so tight something in his back cracked. He was introduced to the firbolg as the blue woman sang his praises, lifting the green woman so her clever goblin (Hafling, now? he was confused) fingers freed the parts of his coat that the others couldn’t reach. Even the quiet wizard praised the grave cleric, in his rough, halting way of speaking. He told the gaudy teifling about the times the pink-haired man had saved their lives, and about how he grown the tree that had birthed him. 

“I’m not calling you mom.” The bloodhunter told the firbolg who just chuckled, going about picking the leaves from the tree and harvesting the mushrooms from the dirt. 

“That’s alright, you can call me whatever you like.” He chuckled, and the tiefling swore he felt the deep vibrations from the other man’s voice rattle through his bones. He rose to his full height, hands full of mushrooms. 

“You know, ah, one of my friends told me a lot about you, so here.” He muttered something under his breath and the tiefling watched as the mushrooms withered and browned and dried in his palms. “Here. These are for you. Consider it a welcome back gift.” 

He took the mushrooms gently from the cleric just as the monk gave a final tug and his coat fluttered to the soft ground. His barbarian friend picked it up and the wizard used a cantrip to magic the dirt away before the big woman held it out to the peacock of a person. The tiefling beamed with joy, his tail swishing with delight as he slid into it, the familiar weight settling on his shoulders. 

“Just be careful with those. Don’t eat them if you have anywhere to be in the next six hours.” 

“Oh, so these are those kind of mushrooms. Hey,” he said as he turned to the monk, “wanna do drugs with me again?” 

“Yeah, sure, why not?”

**Author's Note:**

> This was first written for A Peacock's Feathers fanzine but due to legal things the zine fell through. I had to edit out the names and decided to leave the fic untouched, as it would have been published. As always, find me twitter @Mebethem4815 and on tumblr at matt-the-blind-cinnamon-roll.


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